Tenten's Prayer
by Summerfly
Summary: If you were very, very quiet, you could hear Tenten praying. NejiTen oneshot.


**Disclaimer: **Tenten doesn't really pray for chocolate every night. Well, not to my knowledge. She would if I owned her and Neji and all the others mentioned here, but I don't...so she doesn't. To my knowledge.

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If you were very, very quiet, you could hear her. She would pray every night and if you got close, you could hear that the plea started with, "Please let Gai and Lee go on a mission far, far away for a very long time." She would say lots of other things too, but it was unusual for sleep to arrive before she asked that particular favor. Probably because it was destined that her sensei and teammate would hang around forever, but that didn't stop her asking. It could happen. 

She would also ask for a few pounds of chocolate to spontaneously appear in front her, but that never happened either. Except for the last three Valentine's Days—and even then it was only half a pound (she had been rather incredulous the first time, and weighed it) and it didn't spontaneously appear, Lee and Neji had waited until that moment to surprise her (Neji had "unintentionally" knocked Lee into the room because the genius felt that Lee was taking too long to shove the chocolates in place). She actually failed to ask for this on the nights that she was exhausted beyond belief, but that was most likely due to the fact that she was exhausted beyond belief. She was female; chocolate was a perfectly reasonable request.

She didn't stop there, though she often paused and peeked at the bed in front of her—just to be sure that the chocolate hadn't spontaneously appeared, in which case she would need to add it to her list of 'thank-you's. She usually went on to ask for a dreamless sleep. "Because dreaming about what I can't have is really disheartening, and the fun dreams will wake me up early, and there are too many nightmare situations that really could happen." Her voice sometimes cracked at the end of her explanation. Maybe because she had had such a nightmare the night before? Or something frightening had happened during the day? Either way, she pleaded nightly to sleep undisturbed.

The next item on the list was a brief list of people she wanted protected, even if they were quite capable of protecting themselves. "Please keep Gai and Lee and…_him_ and the Hokage and her pig safe. The pig is a recent addition because it did something to Genma today and he was really upset. Said something about bacon being a favorite food of his. Normally I wouldn't care, but for right now, please don't let Tonton die." You would not pick Tenten, out of all the kunoichi in Konoha, to use bad grammar, but facts were facts. She never actually said "his" name out loud, preferred the pronoun for some unknown reason.

You would have to press yourself close to the window to hear her at this point, because her voice would get softer as the prayer went on. It was worth it, though, because after she listed those she wanted alive, the list of the hopefully-soon-to-be-pronounced-dead began. "My personal preference is that Sasuke's death be particularly gruesome and painful. But if you want to kill him quickly and get his worthless carcass dealt with, I understand that—I can handle him dying quickly, so long as he's dead. And I mean _dead._" She also wanted to murder the entirety of Akatsuki, a few names you wouldn't recognize, Jiraiya, the Kazekage, and Sai. She never explained her reasoning behind any of these deaths. It was likely that it was a flawed reasoning anyway.

After that…she would blush and smile, which would be odd to see at first. After a vengeful tirade of exactly how horrific she wanted the deaths of certain people, you wouldn't think of her smiling and burning pink. But if you were there every night, and you were very, very quiet with incredibly amazing hearing—you would understand her sudden change of thoughts. "Make Lee and _him_ even stronger. Keep them training hard." You might want to snort in annoyance or give an oh-come-on-like-you-need-to-ask-for-that 'hn' while she said it—but very quietly. If she heard, she wouldn't finish the prayer correctly.

You would have to strain your ears at this point, flattening yourself to the window and mentally thanking her for closing her blinds before she started praying. Because the prayer would be almost done, and the very best part was the very last.

If you could hear her at all, you would hear her breath, "And give him my love. Give Neji my love." And with those words, she'd end it.

Now, if you were very, very quiet, you would hear him sigh. He would be right next to you, of course, because rain or ice, he was there at the window. You might not be, because he just might kill you for showing up, but if you were quiet while you were there you might observe unscathed. You would be able to watch him watching her through the blinds as she slipped underneath her covers. He would only linger for a moment after that sigh before he vanished, leaving for his home and his bed. Just like a ritual, every night. If you were still around, you would be able to listen to Tenten cry herself to sleep after Neji left.

She prayed entirely for him to hear her anyway. She never once prayed for herself.

But you could only hear her tears fall if you were very, very quiet.

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My first oneshot ever. My first complete fanfiction ever. 

...would you mind giving me my first review ever? (I'll do just fine without my first flame ever, thank you for asking, but a constructive critisism would be nice!)

I tried...I really did. It's not my fave pairing, but I've been reading SerenitySilence's fics over the past few days and when I sat down to procrastinate on all my overdue english homework, this is what came out. I'm sorry if it's horribly inferior to what a five-year-old could do. ...that's all!


End file.
